Lessons Learned on Best Practices in CRM

If you're just starting your education in CRM, don't get intimidated by the term best practices?? remember it has more to do with the highest performance that companies have discovered they are capable of attaining and less to do with expensive software investments. In reality best practices gets so much attention due to the fact that companies are always looking for ways to raise the performance bar. Consider these lessons learned on best practices:

• You can't buy your way into best practices. These are really measures of how companies are performing relative to their goals. Best practices are more about setting a high bar of performance than about pure spend on CRM Software.
• CRM is no panacea alone to attain best practices. If you're serious about getting your company to the highest performance possible, realize that you'll have to do the hard work of redefining all processes that interact with the customer first. This can take much time and investment, yet it is probably the best single strategic direction any company can take as entire industries become more customer-focused every day. Only after this hard work of redefining processes should CRM applications be layered in to your company.
• Best Practices in CRM are for every company that has a customer. Don't think you have to get to a predetermined revenue level or spend a certain amount in CRM applications to qualify - if you have a customer you qualify. Because best practices is all about creating greater intimacy with your prospects and customers - it's removing the barriers of inefficient and often outmoded processes so customers can be better served. And any company could always improve on that aspect of their strategy.
• Delivering best practices year after year is more dependent on people than software. One of the world's largest banks based in Europe spends over 70% of their information technology budget on changing how people work, and only 25 - 30% on software. Why? Because educating their employees about how to excel with new approaches to doing their everyday work is delivering big results - and the software tools they use for CRM just make the change more lasting since these software tools are aligned with the re-defined jobs people have.
• Best practices are not another word for reduction in force or cost reduction. A few software vendors gave best practices a bad name when times got tough in the 2000 to 2003 timeframe by promising if any company used their software, they could reduce the number of employees they had by 10% or more. This is hogwash; any software that promises to reduce headcount to pay for itself is not, by definition, delivering best practices. Because software should deliver value from improved processes first and increased revenues, and finally by reducing the costs of interacting with a group of customers.
• Recognize that best practices in your industry are changing constantly. Companies are always finding ways of getting more efficient at serving their customers, channels, partners, suppliers and employees. Any company growing and attracting customers will be very different six months from today than it is right now, so too the best practices the company is pursuing - those high goals of making their company streamlined to attract and retain customers - are changing. The best companies are not the largest; they are the most efficient, fastest growing in customer capture and retention and lifetime customer profitability.

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